Employee turnover is a matter of concern for all business organizations in today’s competitive business environment. We can argue that it is one of the most pressing problems that the HR managers face in today’s business world. The costs of turnover are high, particularly for professional and managerial employees, because their skills and knowledge are difficult to replace (Noor 2011). As such, organizations put a lot of effort to control employees leaving their organizations and the matter has evolved as a subject and a matter of study and research for scholars and researchers globally over the years.
Labor turnover intention is defined as the process in which employees leave an organization and have to be replaced. (Mathis and Jackson 2006). Mobley et al., (1979) defined the turnover intention as the individual’s intention to voluntarily quit the organization or profession. Intentions are important to study, as they predict an individual’s perception and judgement (Mobley et al., 1979). As such, intentions are the most immediate determinant of actual behavior (to leave) (Ajzen and Fishbein 1980).
Researchers have found that the turnover intention comprises of a sequence of processes such as thinking of quitting, intention to search (a new job) and intention to quit (Mobley 1982; Mobley et al., 1978). Thus proactive measures could be adopted by the organizations to stop or control the actual turnover if it were aware of the turnover intention of the employees beforehand.
The below diagram clearly explains the Mobely theory, the decision process that an employee goes through when he is confronted with the idea of leaving the job.
Figure 1 - Mobley theory
Source - Journal of Applied Psychology
According to this theory the quitting
intention begins with the employee evaluating the present job to determine
whether they are happy or not with what they are doing at present. For an
example the employee would base their
evaluation on factors related to the characteristics associated with their job
such as their pay, their level of autonomy, how important they feel in their
job is etc. (Mobley, 1977).
After this evaluation if the employee
determines that he is happy and satisfied with the present job, the quitting
intention experiences a natural death. But if he determines that he is not
satisfied with what he is doing now, the intention to quit will continue.in
some instances this feeling of dissatisfaction will leave the employee to
withdraw by other means such as putting less effort to the job and getting
absent from work frequently. (Mobley, 1977). This behavior also may lead to the
employee being fired from the job for low performance. Then it becomes a case
of involuntary turnover which was fueled by a voluntary turnover intention.
Once the employee’s intention to leave is
affirmed after determining that he is unsatisfied in the current job then the
process of evaluating the possibilities of finding a new job begins. In this
process the employee will search for chances of finding a new job and weigh the
cost of leaving the current job with the benefits of the new job. In this
process if the employee finds out that the chances of finding a new job is low
or the cost of leaving the present job is higher than the benefits of the new
job, the intention to leave will change and the employee will remain in the
present job. (Mobley, 1977). However, if the employee feels that their search for a
new job will be successful and that the costs of leaving the job are not that
detrimental they will enter the next stage of the model.
This is where the employee actually begins to
start planning on searching for a new job. They may think about job head
hunters or job listing websites they are going to post their résumés on.
There could be other reasons why
employees may want to search for a new job that has nothing to do with their
current job. The employee may be looking for a new job because their spouse
received a promotion that requires them to move to a different state (Mobley,
1977).
After the plan for searching a new job is
completed the actual search begins, which is the next step.
In this step the employee finds alternatives
to the present job and starts to evaluate them against the present job. The model
suggests in these next two stages there are a variety of results that could
occur from this evaluation process. The employee compares the alternatives they
found against each other and see which one is their primary alternative. Next
the employee compares the alternative to their current job. From this
comparison the employee may realize that the other job is not as good as it may
seem and they view their present job more favorably (Mobley, 1977). Britt
and Jex(2008) compared this idea to a common phrase where the employee realizes
‘the grass is not always greener on the other side’. The other potential
result from this evaluation of alternatives is the employee may decide to
withdraw from the labor market completely and stay at home (Mobley, 1977).
People may not quit automatically when
presented with alternatives because of the attitudes they hold toward changing
jobs. Also, their decision to not quit right away may be influenced by
normative pressures from the social environment to stay with their current
job. An example of normative influence could be the employee was raised
with family members who kept the same job their whole life and based on that
the employee may feel it’s unacceptable to quit (Mobley, 1977).
The last stage is the employee actually
quitting their job. This model demonstrates that sometimes employees will
suddenly quit impulsively without going through the decision making process.
This usually occurs because of some final situation occurs where their job
dissatisfaction causes them to quit right away rather than rationalizing their
decision to quit (Mobley, 1977).
References
1) Ajzen, I, Fishbein, M. (1980), Understanding Attitudes and Predicting
Social Behavior. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
2) Mathis, R.L & Jackson, J.H (2006), Human Resource Management, 11th edn.,Omaha.
3) Mobley, W. (1977). Intermediate
linkages in the relationship between job satisfaction and employee turnover. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 62,
pp 237-40.
4) Mobley, W.H. (1982), Employee Turnover: Causes, Consequences, and
Control, Addison-Wealey, Reading, MA.
5) Mobley, W.H., Griffeth, R.W., Hand, H.H.
and Meglino, B.M. (1979), Review and concept analysis of the employee turnover
process, Psychological Bulletin, Vol
14, pp 224-47.
6) Noor, K.M (2011), Work-Life Balance
and Intention to Leave among Academics in Malaysian Public Higher Education
Institutions, International Journal of
Business and Social Science, vol.2(11).
Well Amal. Job satisfaction has been long recognized as an effective determinant in explaining turnover intention (Rosse and Hulin, 1985). Employee turnover is costly. In addition to replacement fees, there are hidden costs such as productivity loss, workplace safety issues, and morale damage. an improved selection process that assesses candidates' turnover risk and motivational fit early in the hiring process helps reduce turnover that translates into organization profitability (O'Connell and Kung, 2007)
ReplyDeleteThank you Krishan for your comment and agree with you that employee turnover is costly. . Research suggests that direct replacement costs can reach as high as 50%-60% of an employee’s annual salary, with total costs associated with turnover ranging from 90% to 200% of annual salary (Cascio,2006 sited in Allen 2008).
ReplyDeleteAlso as you suggested it would be a very prudent if organizations can introduce a method to assess the candidates turnover risk at the time of selection it self either by a psychometric test or by a behavioral test. By introducing such a mechanism the company would be able to minimize future turnover cost of employees.
Good job Amal. Also I agreed to Krishan as well the turnover is costly. and there is two kind of turnover can be revealed on some researches which are voluntary turnover and non voluntary turnovers. When an employee leaves his work and the organization by his or her will the turnover is termed as voluntary turnover.(Perez M 2008)
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment Chathurika, Non voluntary turnover could be costly if the position has to be filled again. But since non voluntary turnover is a decision taken by the management for the betterment of the organization the benefits of such turnover will negate the adversity of the cost factor.
DeleteAccording to AK, (2018) factors of retention because it fulfills the financial and material desires. turnover of employees is mainly due to low salary, pay level, and rewards had a negative and significant relationship with turnover intention.
ReplyDeleteReference
AK, B. (2018). Turnover Intention Influencing Factors of Employees: An Empirical Work Review. Journal of Entrepreneurship & Organization Management, 07(03).
Thank you for your comment. Yes , you are correct. Employee's salary and the reward package has a direct and a significant relationship with the turnover.
DeleteAmal, adding further to you article I have mentioned organizational factors which cause Employee turnover. Organisational instability has been shown to have a high degree of high turnover. Indications are that employees are more likely to stay when there is a predictable work environment and vice versa (Zuber, 2001). In organizations where there was a high level of inefficiency there was also a high level of staff turnover (Alexander et al., 1994). Therefore, in situations where organizations are not stable employees tend to quit and look for stable organisations .The imposition of a quantitative approach to managing the employees led to disenchantment of staff and hence it leads to labour turnover. Therefore management should not use quantitative approach in managing its employees. Adopting a cost oriented approach to employment costs increases labour turnover Simon et al. (2007). All these approaches should be avoided if managers want to minimize employee turnover an increase organisational competitiveness in this environment of globalization (Ongori,2007).
ReplyDeleteYes Naomi, organizational instability will affect the job security of employees. Job security is one of the main reasons that would affect job satisfaction( Anwar, 2011) and job satisfaction is one of the main factors that would determine turnover (Anwar,2011).
DeleteBased on Jayaram (2015), Malaysia scored third highest voluntary turnover rate at 9.5% in Southeast Asia year 2015. Automatic Data Processing (ADP) Workforce Vitality Index 2017 has reported that there are high employees' turnover problems, which affect construction companies and contractors but unnoticed by them (Palaganas, 2018). In the previous studies such as Thomas (2015), Seong (2015) and Nkomo et al. (2009) showed that salary and fringe benefits are the key factors for employees' turnover intention in construction companies. Although previous studies focused on factors employees' turnover intention, there is a lack of investigation of factors affecting employees' turnover intention in construction companies in Malaysia.
ReplyDelete